Tracing environmental forcing on groundwater recharge

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The increasing demographic pressure on water resources, complicated by climatic stress, endangers the quantity, quality and distribution of freshwater resources around the world. Ability to measure, model and predict groundwater recharge under various land uses and climate conditions, is required for sustainable resource management by local authorities. Groundwater is now a significant source of water for human consumption, supplying nearly half of all drinking water in the world, up to 80% of the rural population in the province of Quebec, and around 43% of water consumed by irrigation. ***Based on a few case-studies in eastern Canada and Western Europe illustrating a variety of hydrogeological settings, climatic conditions and anthropogenic stress, the current proposal aims to develop tools and aquifer-scale models in order to improve our capability of:***- Quantifying the present impacts of various land uses on groundwater recharge ***- Predicting the response of groundwater resources to land use and climate change in small river basins ***- Assessing the impact of changes in groundwater recharge quality and quantity on surface ecosystems******This program will lead to several innovative contributions to research: ***1) The development of new methods for long-term monitoring and quantification of recharge fluxes under different land uses. The program will contribute to advances in monitoring of temperature and water isotopes in the subsurface, associated with modeling of the propagation of atmospheric signals into the ground. These original tools, allowing indirect quantification of recharge fluxes at the local scale, are of great interest for both research and water management purposes.***2) A watershed-scale model of groundwater resource response to change in land use and climate. Recharge is a key parameter in groundwater resource management, and a reliable estimate of recharge is required for sustainable management. The recharge fluxes will be assessed for different land uses at the watershed scale, and will be a mainstay for policymakers.***3) The investigation of environmental instabilities, such as diffuse or point-source pollution in groundwater. Development of innovative isotopic tools and improvements in geochemical modeling will provide critical information on the propagation of the anthropogenic signal in groundwater and an early warning compared to more traditional approaches.***This research program is dedicated to the investigation of groundwater cycling, and proposes innovative contributions to accurate modeling and prediction of pollutant propagation. These advances will respond to growing societal needs in water resource management. The program will include HQP training: 1 PDF, 3 PhD, 3 MSc and 5 BSc. These HQP will benefit significantly from close collaborations with national and international research institutions.**